The Infamous Doctor Black Jack
by LuxaLucifer
Summary: He'd known something was wrong the moment he walked in the house. It was the smell. He was a man who'd smelled many decaying corpses, but he'd never thought one would be his girlfriend. Black Jack/Terezi, Character Death


So, I know it's been forever since I posted anything. I've been writing (not a lot, but still) but my internet connection went out on account of it being stolen from our neighbor, so I'm posting a pet project I wrote for myself and my friends. It's sounds a bit cracky, I know, Terezi and Black Jack, but we like it, so whatever. XD

Takes place with Terezi as an alien on Earth and, well, you'll see. Black Jack is pretty old here, I guess. Don't know what else to say. Written on my school iPad so it might have stupid autocorrect errors.

* * *

"Answer the door, sensei. I know you're in there."

She no longer lisps, and it's hard to tell its her. For a moment he wishes he could open the door, but he knows he can't let her see him this way. He was her model, her idol, her love for so long that he cannot destroy that.

"I'm going to leave you some curry and our address. If you ever want to stop and see us and the kids, you're always welcome."

He hears a thump and a clatter, and knows it is the curry. He waits for the sound of her footsteps to recede before unlocking the door and pulling the curry in, leaving the address outside.

She hasn't improved in cooking one bit, but he doesn't care.

* * *

When he'd returned from the surgery, he'd been tired. He'd been jet lagged and exhausted; even his fingers had been sore to the bone. All he had wanted was to get into his house, relax in his armchair, and fight with his alien girlfriend.

He'd known something was wrong the moment he walked in the house. It was the smell. He was a man who'd smelled many decaying corpses, but he'd never thought one would be his girlfriend.

Where was she? Why hadn't she bounded up to him, breasts heaving in a badly fitting, completely impractical outfit she'd procured? Where was she?

She'd called him. She'd asked him to come home. She'd said she was sick. She told him her symptoms, and he'd told her she had a cold. Told her to rest up and to drink fluids and to not call him again, because he was busy.

His walk to the bad room was slow and dumb. He didn't remember dropping his bag, but suddenly in was no longer in his hand. The smell was stronger in the bedroom, and he opened the door without hesitation.

She was there. She was lying in the bed, blankets wrapped around her. No...not blankets. Shirts. His shirts. They were arranged all around her, one pressed to her nose. His extra coat was draped over the could remember thinking that it couldn't have been too comfortable.

She was dead. He knew it the moment he walked in the room. He didn't believe it until he shifted the shirts to find her decomposing skin. He checked for a pulse. Nothing.

Some said he was the best surgeon in the world. On some days he agreed with them. Not this day. Not the day he discovered that the love of his life had died two thousand miles away from him of a disease he could have cured, with nothing but the scent of him to ease her passing.

* * *

"Sensei, I keep getting calls from a man with a dying wife," he hears from outside of his door. "He says he has fifty million for you, if you'll just take a look at her. He sounds very desperate."

He doesn't answer. He still does operations, sometimes. Not often. Not on rich people anymore. People who find him and beg long enough. People who don't see the bottles and the grime and the pathetic man he has become, but the surgeon he once was.

"If you really didn't want me to know you we're here, you shouldn't eat the curry."

He doesn't answer. Sometimes her bad cooking reminds him of Terezi's, and it makes him feel guilty, because he would much rather it be hers.

"Sensei...I miss you. All my life I wanted an adult body, but I wouldn't have taken it if I'd known it would mean giving you up."

He can hear her sobs through the door. She cries for a long time. When she leaves, he opens to door and pulls the curry in.

* * *

He has forgotten how to tie his ribbon only takes a second to remember, but by then it is too late. He is already frozen with shock that he could forget something that was once so deep ingrained in him, something he did every day, year after year. He finished tying it sloppily and puts the musty coat on, shaking it out as he pulls it around his shoulders.

it is only after he is on the train that he realizes he has forgotten to shave. Inside, with shuttered windows, his black-and-white scruff is nothing, but out here, people stare at him. He is thin now, and pale. His eyes bore into you with a ferocious intensity. He was never an attractive man (only two people had ever thought otherwise, and he'd let one of them die) but now he is frightening.

The staring bothers him. He cannot believe it, but he has been avoiding people for so long that their unashamed gaping makes him up embarrassed and uneasy. He pulls the high collar of his coat even higher, covering his face as well he could.

"Are you yakuza?" asks a child, tottering up to him to the horror of his mother. "Are you in a gang?"

"No," he said hoarsely. "I am not."

"Then what are you?"

What was he? He remembers his old anger at being mistaken for a gang member, his fury at the world for being so prejudiced...and that it would scar him like it did. He doesn't care now. He might as well join a gang.

"I'm a doctor," he says.

The mother, who has come to collect her child, shoots him an incredulous stare. He juts out his chin and glares back. Once upon a time it was the truth.

"If I were sick, would you fix me?" says the child.

"Maybe," he says. If you had enough money, and I was feeling like it, he thinks.

The child opens his mouth to reply but he's dragged away by his mother, who shushes him wildly and pulls him away from him, apologizing frantically.

"I'm not going to hurt him," he snaps, turning away from them. He rubs his chin for a moment, but withdraws it quickly, having forgotten about the beard.

He hears the mother tell her child not to approach crazy people, but he doesn't care. He needs a razor.

* * *

When shaved, he looks even more tired, there are lines around his mouth and below his eyes he has never noticed before. How old is he? He is having difficulty remembering the exact year. How embarrassing would it be if he can't even remember how old he is?

His chest tightens as he realizes that he is the only person alive who knows his birthday. He never told Pinoko, even though she often asked. He told Terezi once, but she is dead. How many birthdays had they celebrated together?

He wonders what that stranger's tired face would look like with a smile. He thinks about it, but he leaves the bathroom without trying.

Now that he is shaved, he joins the line for the ferry to the island where he'll land, then get a two-seater plane to his destination. It's tourist season here. He can't remember a time when it wasn't tourist season.

When he buys his ticket, the man stares at him. He is used to it, so he doesn't think anything of it until the ticket puncher says, "Doctor?"

He is taken aback. "Yes?"

The man's face breaks into a grin. "It is you! You haven't come by in ages. We all thought you'd gone broke and had to sell your islands."

"No," he says. "I still own them."

The last time he'd been to these islands, it had been to bury Terezi.

"You still own them?" says the man cheerfully. "No offense, but you look like you've had better days. Maybe you should sell them."

"I didn't ask for your opinion," he snaps in reply. "I'll be moving along now."

As he boards the boat, he guiltily thinks that he shouldn't have lashed out at the man like that. He'd only been joking, and not only that, but he was right, he has seen better days.

* * *

"I'm sorry."

He leans his head against her headstone and wonders how trolls were buried. He'd never thought to ask. Why, when he was certain to die decades before her?

Except that wasn't how it had happened. He'd left her alone, he'd ignored her calls, and she had died without him. He'd never been there for her. When he was home, she'd trail at his coattails, begging him to stay for just a little longer. He never did, not even when it mattered.

"If I had listened, you would still be alive. I could have saved you."

He whispers it because he knows that no matter how loudly he says it, she won't hear. It's just him and the gravestone. Terezi Pyrope, it reads with plain engraved letters. No birthday, just a death date. He remembers how hard he'd tried to think of something decent for her grave, but all he'd ended up coming up with was 'Made One Life Better.' He wads pretty sure she would have hated it: in hindsight, he did too.

He takes his coat over and sits with his back on the gravestone. He feels bad. He can't figure it how he feels bad, if it's anger or grief or hatred, although he should know, because he's felt all of them. She wouldn't want you to take the blame, he tells himself. She wouldn't want you to ruin your life because of her.

Well, maybe she would a little. She'd want him to mourn, and feel bad. She's want him to take a little blame.

He lets out a noise that takes him a while to recognize. He is crying. He can't remember the last time he cried, it's been so long, but now tears are sliding down his face and his chest is wracked with sobs. He sits in front of her grave, on the island he only bought for her after his death, and cries.

It's the first time he's cried since she died.

* * *

"Doctor Black Jack? Is that you?"

At first he wonders if he can just keep his eyes closed and the person will go away. A stupid idea, he thinks regretfully as the woman's voice continues.

"It is you," she says. "I can't believe it!"

He knows that voice, he realizes. He opens his eyes. Sitting across from him on the train is the Black Queen.

Jesus Christ.

"Hello," he says.

She looks at him with wide eyes. She is older, he sees, older but still pretty. Her hair is still kept up in those blonde curls, but now there are streaks of gray running thought them. Still pretty. There are lines around her eyes and mouth, but she is still pretty. So unlike him.

"I almost didn't recognize you," she says. "You look so..."

"Terrible?"

She blushes. "Different."

"Are you still with..." he begins, trying to remember the name of her husband.

"Rock and I divorced years ago," she says. "It's been fifteen years since we saw each other, doctor. We had a daughter and separated not long after that."

"How long did you spend in..."

"We came back to Japan after a few years," she finished for him. "Where have you been? The medical world has been saying you're dead, killed by some mafia boss you crossed."

"Might as well have been."

She begins to laugh, but it dies when she looks at his face. He wishes she hadn't stopped; he would have been okay with hearing her laugh. Like the rest of her, it was still pretty.

"Where have you been all this time, if you haven't been dead?"

She leans forward, expectant, and he realizes she thinks that his appearance is all part of the act, all part of the facade that is the infamous Doctor Black Jack. But he doesn't want to be Black Jack right now. For the first time in twenty-five years, all he wants to be is Kuro'o Hazama.

He thinks about lying. He thinks about telling her that he's been out of the country, that he's been underground, that he's been in prison. He doesn't.

"My girlfriend died," he says. "I wasn't there to save her."

The shock is palpable on her face, but there isn't time for her to respond as the train pulls into her stop. She stands up, visibly shaken.

"It was nice meeting you again..." he begins. His face flushes. He can't remember her name. He spent months pining after her, and now he can't remember her name. "It was nice meeting you again," he finishes lamely.

She kisses him on the cheek before she goes; there is forgiveness in it. He wipes it off after she leaves.

* * *

"Sensei!"

He freezes. He is tired. He has been sleeping on trains and board and gravestones. His bones aches, and so do his scars. He wants to unlock his apartment and walk inside of it. He can't though, because in front of his door sits a young woman.

"Pinoko," he rasps.

She examines him critically, big brown eyes narrowing. Why did he make her so beautiful? It only ended up making him feel worse.

"You haven't been eating well," she says. "It's a good thing I brought curry."

She holds out a steaming lot of curry, and he climbs the last few steps to his apartment and takes it. It's still warm, nearly burning his hands as he handles it.

"Where'd you go?" she asks, inviting herself in as he unlocks the door, balancing the curry in one arm. "A surgery?"

"No," he replies.

He set the curry on the kitchen counter and turns around to find Pinoko standing in his living room, hands on her slender hips. He looks at his living room floors and blanches. How embarrassing. Empty bottles litter his floor, and the couch is ragged and stained. His television is broken, and only one of the lamps work.

"Wow," says Pinoko. "This place is a mess. It's good you're going to come to our place."

"What?"

"I've been trying to see you for weeks," she said softly, wringing her hands together. "I miss you. And I think you miss me."

"I don't deserve it," he replies quietly, voicing words he has kept inside him for a long time. "I can't complain about missing you. I messed it up, all of it, I made you a human body and shoved you out the door. I threw you away because you were getting in the way of me and Terezi. I don't deserve your love."

"Sensei, I needed to grow up. I was in that body for a decade. Because of you, I was able to get an education, marry, and adopt. It would have been selfish to do anything else."

She raises a hand to his sallow cheek and brushes it gently. He steps back.

"You're too nice," he murmurs. "Too kind to me."

"Where is she?" says Pinoko. "What happened to her? I never found out. Did you break up?"

Suddenly his heart hurts, and he wrenches himself away from her. "S-She died," he stammers. "I let her die."

Pinoko brings her hands to her mouth. "Achonn burike," she whispers miserably. "I knew you were by yourself, but I had no idea..."

"I drove you away, and she died. This is all no better than I deserve."

He turns away from her, but he hasn't even taken a step before he feels a hand on his forearm, very tightly gripping him. He stares at her, and recognizes that look on her face. Pinoko is angry now, and there is nothing he can do to sway her mind.

"You've been holed up in here drinking and eating nothing but my curry for too long! I bet your body is wasting away, the way you've been neglecting it!" she snapped. "You're coming with me, Doc, and there's nothing on this earth that can stop me."

She pauses, as though waiting for him to response. He licks his lips, unsure.

"Okay," he says quietly.

She stops herself halfway through open ending her mouth. "W-What?"

"I'll come with you," he continues. "Even though..."

"Even though what?"

"I'm me," he mutters.

"If I didn't know what you were like," she replies, drawing him back towards her. "Why would I have come for you in the first place?"

He smiles, and picks the curry back up from the kitchen counter.

I won't forget you, Terezi, he thought.

* * *

Reviews are love! Isn't that what I used to say?


End file.
